Having last month considered the Buddha called Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence, we consider the difficulty faced by Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Buddha in attaining enlightenment.
The Buddha said to the bhikṣus:
“The duration of the life of Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Buddha was five hundred and forty billion nayuta kalpas. [Before he attained Buddhahood,] he sat at the place of enlightenment and defeated the army of Mara. He wished to attain Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi, but could not because the Dharma of the Buddhas had not yet come into his mind. He sat cross-legged without moving his mind and body for one to ten small kalpas. During all that time the Dharma of the Buddhas did not come into his mind.
“[Before he sat at the place of enlightenment,] the Trāyastriṃs̒a Gods prepared him a lion-like seat a yojana high under the Bodhi tree so that he might be able to attain Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi on that seat. When he sat on that seat, the Brahman-heavenly-kings rained heavenly flowers on the area extending a hundred yojanas in all directions from that seat. From time to time withered flowers were blown away by fragrant winds and new flowers were rained down. [The Brahman-heavenly-kings] continued this offering to him for fully ten small kalpas. [After he attained Buddhahood also,] they continued raining flowers until he passed away.
“[When he sat on that seat,] the four heavenly-kings beat heavenly drums, and the other gods made heavenly music and offered it to him. They continued these offerings also for fully ten small kalpas. [After he attained Buddhahood also,] they continued these offerings until he passed away.
“Bhikṣus! At the end of the period of ten small kalpas, the Dharma of the Buddhas came into the mind of Great-UniversalWisdom-Excellence Buddha. Now he attained Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi.
When he sat on that seat, the Brahman-heavenly-kings rained heavenly flowers on the area extending a hundred yojanas in all directions from that seat. From time to time withered flowers were blown away by fragrant winds and new flowers were rained down. [The Brahman-heavenly-kings] continued this offering to him for fully ten small kalpas. [After he attained Buddhahood also,] they continued raining flowers until he passed away.
The Buddha describes the life of an ancient Buddha named Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence in Chapter Seven of the Lotus Sūtra. In the story, when that Buddha took the seat from which he would become enlightened, the gods who created his world recognized the immense benefit all beings were about to receive and showed their joy by filling the skies with these beautiful flowers. After that Buddha became enlightened, gods from innumerable other worlds came to his world to make offerings, giving up the pleasures of their own worlds. The enlightenment of any being extends beyond the personal contact we have with that being. It changes the entire universe.
The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com
World-Honored One! I have never seen anyone like you before. Your teachings have these inconceivable, wonderful merits. The practices performed according to your teachings and precepts are peaceful and pleasant. From today on, I will not act according to my own mind. I will not have wrong views, arrogance, anger or any other evil thought.
King Wonderful-Adornment makes this declaration to Cloud-Thunderpeal-Star-King-Flower-Wisdom Buddha in Chapter Twenty-Seven of the Lotus Sūtra. The king had been led to this Buddha by his sons, who showed him the wonders they learned from their practice of the Buddha Dharma. With his mind purified by hearing the Buddha’s teachings, he makes this aspiration to behave differently. Whether or not he can keep this aspiration, he shows his realization that hearing the teachings is not enough. Practicing them means changing our minds and how we live.
The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com
Having last month considered how various followers are like various plants, we conclude Chapter 5, The Simile of Herbs.
I now expediently reveal the Dharma with this simile.
I expound one truth with various discourses.
This simile is only one of the expedients
Employed by my wisdom,
Just as a drop of sea water is
Part of the great ocean.
Though I water all living beings of the world
With the same rain of the Dharma,
They practice the teachings
Of the same taste differently
According to their capacities,
Just as the herbs and trees
In thickets and forests
Grew gradually according to their species.
The Buddhas always expound
The teachings of the same taste
In order to cause all living beings of the world
To understand the Dharma.
Those who practice the teachings continuously
Will obtain [ various fruits of] enlightenment.
Both the Śrāvakas and the cause-knowers,
Who live in mountains or forests,
Who have reached the final stage
of their physical existence,
And who have attained enlightenment by hearing the Dharma,
May be likened to the herbs
Which have already grown up.
The Bodhisattvas
Who resolve to seek wisdom,
Who understand the triple world,
And who seek the most excellent vehicle,
May be likened to the short trees
Which have already grown up.
Those who practice dhyāna,
Who have supernatural powers,
Who have great joy
When they hear that all things are insubstantial,
And who save all living beings
By emitting innumerable rays of light,
May be likened to the tall trees
Which have already grown up.
As previously stated, Kāśyapa, I expound the Dharma
And lead human flowers
[To the fruits of Buddhahood]
Just as the large cloud waters all flowers
By a rain of the same taste
And causes them to bear their fruits.
Kāśyapa, know this!
I reveal the enlightenment of the Buddha
With various stories of previous lives,
With various parables and similes,
That is, with various expedients.
All the other Buddhas do the same.
Now I will tell you [, Śrāvakas,]
The most important truth.
You, Śrāvakas,
Have not yet attained [true] extinction.
What you are now practicing is
The Way of Bodhisattvas.
Study and practice it continuously,
And you will become Buddhas.
Every Buddha vows at the outset:
“I will cause all living beings
To attain the same enlightenment
That I attained.”
The Buddha sings these verses in Chapter Two of the Lotus Sūtra. The Buddha holds nothing back from us. There is nothing hidden or secret in his teachings. He is not threatened by anyone who reaches his wisdom, since he knows this is the potential we all have in us. By his example we can discern between the knowledge that separates from others, and that which unites us with our fellow beings.
The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com
Having last month considered how the Buddha is like the Rich man helping his son, we consider how the Buddha prepared the followers of the lesser vehicle with expedients.
You told us
To purify the world of the Buddha
And teach all living beings.
We heard this, but did not wish to do so
Because we had already attained the truth:
“All things are void and tranquil.
Nothing appears or disappears.
Nothing is larger or smaller.
Nothing has āsravas.
Nothing is subject to cause and effect.”
Having thought this, we did not wish
To do [the Bodhisattva practices].
In the long night
We did not care
For the wisdom of the Buddha.
We did not wish to have it.
We thought:
“The Dharma we attained is perfect.”
Having studied the truth of the Void in the long night,
We emancipated ourselves
From the sufferings of the triple world,
Attained the Nirvāṇa-with-remainder,
And reached the final stage
Of our physical existence.
You said [to us]:
“When you attain enlightenment infallibly,
You will have already repaid
The favors I gave you.”
Although we expounded to the sons of the Buddha
The teachings for Bodhisattvas in order to cause them
To seek the enlightenment of the Buddha,
We did not wish to attain
The same enlightenment for ourselves.
You, our Leader, left us alone because you knew this.
You did not persuade us
To seek the enlightenment of the Buddha.
You did not say
That we should be able to have real benefits.
The rich man knew
That his son was base and mean.
Therefore, he made him nobler
With expedients,
And then gave him
All his treasures.
In the same manner,
You knew that we wished
To hear the Lesser Vehicle.
Therefore, you did a rare thing.
You prepared us with expedients,
And then taught us the great wisdom.
Today we are not what we were then.
We have obtained
What we did not expect
To obtain
Just as the poor son obtained
The innumerable treasures.
World-Honored One!
We have attained enlightenment, perfect fruit.
We have secured pure eyes
With which we can see the Dharma-without-āsravas.
We observed the pure precepts of the Buddha
In the long night.
Today we have obtained the effects and rewards
[Of our observance of the precepts].
We performed the brahma practices for long
According to the teachings of the King of the Dharma.
Now we have obtained the great fruit
Of the unsurpassed Dharma-without-āsravas.
Today we are not what we were then.
We have obtained
What we did not expect
To obtain
Just as the poor son obtained
The innumerable treasures.
Subhūti, Mahā-Kātyāyana, Mahā-Kāśyapa, and Mahā-Maudgalyāyana, all disciples of the Buddha, speak these lines in Chapter Four of the Lotus Sūtra as they explain their story of the wayward son. They compare the father’s treasure house in the story to the Buddha’s enlightenment. Until they had been led by the Buddha’s expedient teachings, they could not even imagine themselves as enlightened, any more than the wayward son in the story could imagine the contents of his father’s treasure house.
The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com
However, we now live in the Latter Age of Degeneration, when disputes and quarrels are rampant while the True Dharma is lost. There is nothing but evil lands where evil rulers, evil subjects and evil people reject the True Dharma, showing respect only to evil dharmas and evil teachers. Evil spirits take advantage of this, filling the lands with the so-called three calamities and seven disasters.
Nichiren wrote this passage in his Treatise on the True Way of Practicing the Teaching of the Buddha (Nyosetsu Shugyō-shō). It can be hard for us to imagine how what we believe can change our society. We think we have to create a new political system, or put the right people in power, or acquire wealth before we can have peace. What would happen in a world where people believed their happiness was intertwined with that of others? What happens in a world where people believe their happiness has to come at the expense of others? Our beliefs are far more powerful than we realize. When we put our belief in the Buddha’s description of the world as it is, and see our place in it as Bodhisattvas who have chosen to be here to benefit others, the world changes before our eyes.
The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com
Having last month concluded today’s portion of Chapter 3, A Parable, we begin Chapter 4, Understanding by Faith, and consider why the men living the life of wisdom disregarded attainment of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi.
Thereupon the men living the life of wisdom: Subhūti, Mahā-Kātyāyana, Mahā-Kāśyapa, and Mahā-Maudgalyāyana felt strange because they heard the Dharma from the Buddha that they had never heard before, and because they heard that the World-Honored One had assured Śāriputra of his future attainment of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi. They felt like dancing with joy, rose from their seats, adjusted their robes, bared their right shoulders, put their right knees on the ground, joined their hands together with all their hearts, bent themselves respectfully, looked up at the honorable face, and said to the Buddha:
“We elders of the Saṃgha were already old and decrepit [when we heard of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi]. We did not seek Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi because we thought that we had already attained Nirvāṇa, and also because we thought that we were too old and decrepit to do so.’ You have been expounding the Dharma for a long time. We have been in your congregation all the while. We were already tired [when we heard of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi]. Therefore, we just cherished the truth that nothing is substantial, the truth that nothing is different from any other thing, and the truth that nothing more is to be sought. We did not wish to perform the Bodhisattva practices, that is, to purify the world of the Buddha and to lead all living beings [to Buddhahood] by displaying supernatural powers because you had already led us out of the triple world and caused us to attain Nirvāṇa. Neither did we wish at all to attain Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi, which you were teaching to Bodhisattvas, because we were already too old and decrepit to do so. But now we are very glad to hear that you have assured a Śrāvakas of his future attainment of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi. We have the greatest joy that we have ever had. We have never expected to hear such a rare teaching all of a sudden. How glad we are! We have obtained great benefits. We have obtained innumerable treasures although we did not seek them.
Seeing that you have peacefully attained
The enlightenment of the Buddha,
We, too, have obtained benefits.
Congratulations! How glad we are!
The children of Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Buddha sing these verses to their father in Chapter Seven of the Lotus Sūtra. They realize that when one being reaches enlightenment, it is a benefit for all beings. In Chapter Ten, the Buddha teaches that many people will hate his Wonderful Dharma with jealousy during his lifetime, and many more will be jealous of it after his extinction. These people see the Buddha as different from themselves, and do not understand how they can become as enlightened as he is. They believe that for one person to gain, another must lose. The Buddha shows that all beings benefit from his teaching. Nothing is taken away from anyone.
The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com
Having last month considered aspects of the three vehicles, we consider the rich man’s gift to his children.
“Śāriputra! Seeing that all his children had come out of the burning house safely and reached a carefree place, the rich man remembered that he had immeasurable wealth. So without partiality, he gave them each a large cart. I am also a father, the father of all living beings. Seeing that many hundreds of thousands of millions of living beings have come out of the painful, fearful and rough road of the triple world through the gate of the teachings of the Buddha, and obtained the pleasure of Nirvāṇa, I thought, ‘I have the store of the Dharma in which the immeasurable wisdom, powers and fearlessness of the Buddhas are housed. These living beings are all my children. I will give them the Great Vehicle. I will not cause them to attain extinction by their own ways. I will cause them to attain the extinction of the Tathāgata.’
“To those who have left the triple world, I will give the dhyāna concentrations and emancipations of the Buddhas for their pleasure. These things are of the same nature and of the same species. These things are extolled by the saints because these things bring the purest and most wonderful pleasure.
“Śāriputra! The rich man persuaded his children to come out at first by promising them the gifts of the three kinds of carts. But the carts which he gave them later were the largest and most comfortable carts adorned with treasures. In spite of this, the rich man was not accused of falsehood. Neither am I. I led all living beings at first with the teaching of the Three Vehicles. Now I will save them by the Great Vehicle only. Why is that? It is because, if I had given them the teaching of the Great Vehicle at first directly from my store of the Dharma in which my immeasurable wisdom, powers and fearlessness are housed, they would not have received all of the Dharma. Śāriputra! Therefore, know this! The Buddhas divide the One Buddha-Vehicle into three by their power to employ expedients.”
Śāriputra! Seeing that all his children had come out of the burning house safely and reached a carefree place, the rich man remembered that he had immeasurable wealth. So without partiality, he gave them each a large cart.
The Buddha tells the parable of the Burning House in Chapter Three of the Lotus Sūtra. In the story, a man tries to warn his children who are playing in a dangerous house of the harm that will come to them if they do not set aside their preoccupations and come out. The children did not listen to him, so he told them about nonexistent toys outside the house. The Buddha then compares himself promising an end to suffering to the father promising nonexistent toys, and himself leading all beings to Enlightenment to the father giving his children toys more wonderful than they could imagine.
The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com
John David Provoo was a gay man. Much of the Post War effort by the federal government to convict him of treason was inflamed by institutional homophobia. But none of that is discussed in Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo.
John Oliver, who co-wrote the book with Nichijo Shaka and who revised and published the book after Nichijo’s death in 2001, says plainly:
He was gay, of course. He had enjoyed relations with several serious girlfriends, including three marriages, but he made no secret that his preference was for men. “Gay as a tree full of owls!” he would say of himself. I don’t quite understand the reference, but I quote it here faithfully, as his self-portrait.
We decided to skirt the gay issue in the telling of his story. In the decision of the Appellate Court, “…No authority has been cited that homosexuality indicates a propensity to disregard the obligation of an oath. The sole purpose and effect of this examination was to humiliate and degrade the defendant and increase the probability that he would be convicted, not for the crime charged, but for his general unsavory character.” It was prosecution dirty tricks that tried to connect the facts of his sexual orientation with treasonous acts, and should never have been part of the trial and, hence, not part of the chapters we call “The Testimony of John Provoo.” In a more enlightened time, it would not have mattered.
Today is that “more enlightened time,” and I believe that removing Provoo’s sexual orientation from his testimony distorts the picture of the life presented in the book, especially Provoo’s journey to Minobu.
In the 1930s Provoo started a lucrative career in broadcast radio:
This was 1933 and 1934, at the end of alcohol prohibition, a time when a speakeasy in San Francisco was easier to find than a water fountain. I floated into my brother’s high life of big paychecks, flashy cars, smoke-filled studios and highballs for lunch, with ease. I did my parts at KFRC, learned that I had affinity for debauchery, scattered the money like flower petals, spent too much time in those nightclubs.
I continued with my Buddhist studies but two parts of my nature were developing, at odds with each other. Just when I had taken vows accepting poverty, I had been steered into San Francisco’s fast lane. I was the sincere, searching, scholarly mystic … a Buddhist Priest; and I was the flamboyant and theatrical prodigy of materialistic America. I was becoming a man with two heads, irreconcilable heads.
At the time he conquered this “affinity for debauchery” by abandoning his radio career and taking a clerk’s post in the San Francisco Federal Reserve.
Nichijo’s book alludes to this conflict between the material world and the spiritual one, but readers are left without a realistic understanding of this complex man if the impact of Provoo’s closeted gay life is left unexplored.
Recalling the overturning of his conviction, he says:
I hadn’t been victorious, I hadn’t won acquittal; I had merely maneuvered the government to a stalemate. In the public eye, I had gotten off on a technicality. In my own mind, I had deserved to win an acquittal: it was the government that had gotten off on a technicality.
The ten years following my release from legal jeopardy was an unhappy odyssey, which I would come to describe as dragging an enormous shipwreck of a reputation through the hostile swamps the government and the media had created for me.
Following his release from jail, Provoo describes his inability to keep jobs each time his past is brought to light. He married only to divorce a few years later. But the depth of his misery during this period is absent from his telling.
ONE Magazine, self-described as the first gay magazine in the United States, reported in its June-July 1956 issue that the Baltimore Sun had reported Provoo was assaulted and robbed by a youth he invited to his apartment one morning.
One year later, on Sept. 8, 1957, the New York Times printed on page 58 an Associated Press article reporting that Provoo, then 40 years old, had pleaded guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
“He blamed a ‘misguided conscience’ for leading him to accompany a 16-year-old Annapolis, Md., youth who ran away from home last week.
“He said the youth had a home life that ‘leaves a great deal to be desired’ and he felt sorry for him.
“Provoo and the youth, Robert H. Lane, were found at a rooming house here [Lincoln, Neb.] about midnight last night.”
On Aug. 30, 1958, the New York Times published on page 32 a single paragraph from an Associated Press story under the headline, Treason Trial Figure Jailed. The Times reported that Provoo, then 41, had been sentenced to three years in the Nebraska men’s reformatory on a morals charge that involved an 18-year-old Lincoln boy. (The discrepancy in the age of Robert Lane is unexplained.)
The conviction and prison sentence aren’t mentioned in this book, but their impact was clearly felt:
It was the winter of 1964, and I was unable to keep up the payments on our car by myself, so I let it go. I had no money and worse, I had no inspiration. I just left one day heading north. I had enough bus fare to make it to Washington, D.C., and that’s all. I stayed overnight in a gospel mission there, and the next day hitchhiked north to Baltimore, where I had found work before. I checked the situation at all the hospitals with no luck. I spent the night in a rescue mission again. The next day I continued hitchhiking north into Pennsylvania. I was dropped off near the town of Williamsport and began walking, I didn’t know where to. It was snowing and my clothes were inadequate for the cold and my shipwreck seemed especially burdensome. I was walking along the road in the snow reviewing all the times someone had been trying to kill me and I began entertaining the idea that it would have been just as well if I had allowed it to happen… if I had been killed long ago. If a bomb had fallen on me running across the smoldering moonscape of Corregidor, if I had been judged a spy by the Japanese tribunal and shot down like Captain Thomson; if I had been beheaded for offering ice water to a Japanese field marshal; if I had succumbed to the injection given me in Malinta Hospital; if I had died of beri-beri at Karenko; if American bombs had fallen on Radio Tokyo; if I had burned in the electric chair at Sing-Sing like the Rosenbergs. Finally, there was no other motive to put one foot in front of the other, and I stopped. I moved myself a short distance off the road and lay down in the snow. Snow fell lightly on my face and began to cover me and I just let myself go.
A family that lived nearby found me several hours later. They had seen my shoulder sticking out of a mound of snow by the roadside. I was stiff and nearly dead. I awoke in a warm bed piled high with blankets and hot water bottles. I was in the home of a family of devout Christians more than willing to nurse a helpless stranger back to health. I remembered the icy heart with which I had resolved to die, but I could not prevent it from thawing in the warm bed of their unselfishness. I had truly been reborn. …
Their love was all that I had needed. Like all of my darkest moments, help had appeared from an unexpected source. I had reached the bottom, the very bottom, and it had found me there, too. I found a job at the Polyclinic Hospital in Williamsport, sometimes working in the emergency room and on ambulance runs, and life was slowly rebuilt in the material sense; my inner strength had been totally renewed by the family of good Samaritans.
On April 26, 1968, before Nichijo Shaka had established his temple in Puna, Hawaii, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin published an interview with him. As a retired newspaperman, I find this article a fitting way to conclude my exploration of Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo
Buddhist Priest ‘Towed Shipwreck’ Many Years
Photo of Nichijo Shaka that accompanied the article.
By Nadine Wharton
Star-Bulletin Writer
A man who spent many of the years of his life “towing a shipwreck” is bringing the teachings of Nichiren Shu Buddhism to Hawaii.He is Shaka Provoo Nichijo, an ordained priest in the Buddhist sect, who teaches classes each Wednesday at 8 p.m. in the Temple of the Eternal Buddha, 32-A Kepola Place, in Nuuanu.
The “shipwreck” belongs to John David Provoo, a U.S. Army Sergeant who was convicted of treason against the government of his country.
They are one and the same person.
Provoo was confined, off and on, from the end of World War II until 1955 — 10 years. Six of those years he spent in the concrete basement maximum security cells of the West Street Detention Center in New York City.
He won his freedom in 1955 on the treason charge. But his lengthy and sensational trial made him a marked man. In the years after his release from prison he had great difficulty in getting and keeping a job.
“It was like towing a shipwreck after you,” he said.
“It was extremely difficult living with it and there was no living without it,” he said of the years between then and now.
He made no attempt to change his name. And he said, “I have never really been estranged from my country. I was disenchanted with the jury that convicted me of treason, but I never gave up faith in America. I never had any idea of changing my allegiance to my country.”
Perhaps the story should begin when Provoo, now about 51, started studying Buddhism at a small temple near his home in Burlingame, Calif. He was 11 years old.
“I am no convert. I have always been a Buddhist,” he said.
As the years went on he studied in Japan. And he studied in Hawaii with the Rev. Ernest Shin Kaku Hunt for several summers.
During the war, he was captured by the Japanese when Corregidor fell. He was later accused of collaborating with the enemy, when he was a prisoner of war and he was convicted of treason.
Nichijo is in Hawaii for several reasons. He feels there is a definite need for
Buddhist teachers who are competent in English. He says the University of Hawaii “is such a live force in the community.”
“Hawaii really has a kind of civilization that is unique in many ways,” he said. “Life generally is better here for everybody than on the Mainland.”
Every night except Wednesday, Nichijo works at the Lavada Nursing Home. “I tend the sick,” he said. “I have been doing that for many years.”
He said he hopes to build a temple and a “dojo” or retreat temple here. “I work so I can make a temple for the people,” he said.
Nichijo said he is not dependent on anyone, and does not ask for contributions. He said he does not require much money. “I lived most recently in Japan on an income of $14 a month.”
He said he hopes to dispel some of the popular illusions about Buddhism. “Buddhism is no ism,” he said. “It is not a system of ethics or dogma and it is not a creed—it is a way of life, the aware way of life,” he said.
And the man who once felt his life consisted of “towing a shipwreck” said: “My heart is overflowing with gratitude for the way things really are.”
Nichijo Shaku died Aug. 28, 2001, at the age of 84. He was inurned Oct. 8, 2001, at the Hawaii Veterans Cemetery No. 2.
